fenchurch | Eight Days of Happiness -- Day 3

A bit over a month ago, our vacuum cleaner quit working. It's a canister vac that we've had for about nine years, so we were being rather philosophical about the whole thing (the vacuum still, um, vacuumed... it's just that the floor attachment was no longer getting power to run to roller).

rackham did some fiddling with it, took bits of it apart and got to use his voltmeter extensively... and narrowed the problem down to one of two areas, both of which would cost us around $100 to replace. We start considering whether we should get an estimate from an actual vacuum repair place or just bite the bullet and buy a new vacuum (because, as I mentioned, the current one is getting pretty old). We used some of the other attachments to do some minimal vacuuming (just suction, so not as good as it could be) and have borrowed

taradaktyl's Dyson twice to do a more proper job, figuring if we could just hold out until after the holidays, it would be a much happier thing.

Well, tonight Rackham was vacuuming with the borrowed Dyson while I was doing some mad scramble last-minute gift wrapping and he had a thought about our old vacuum. So, he took it apart. REALLY took it apart... and found where the actual problem was (in one the general areas he'd figured it was, but he was able to narrow it down to the exact issue). A bit of duct tape later and our vacuum is working again! Even better, he can get a replacement part for the one that broke for around $15! Yay! $15 is soooooo much better than a new vacuum cleaner. This is such a relief!